


Despite Everything

by rane_ne



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: And the consequences of his actions, Angst, Dark, Gen, Genocide Route, Male Frisk, Wherein Frisk faces his past, post-genocide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 09:23:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5285393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rane_ne/pseuds/rane_ne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frisk confronts the skeleton in his closet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Despite Everything

**Author's Note:**

> This went way off-course from what I'd originally planned, but oh well.  
> Warnings for some violence, a not so happy ending, and - if you squint - slight Frisk/Sans. (And honestly idk how I went from Sans-PWP to this...)

When he turns seventeen, Frisk decides to drag out the skeleton in his closet. 

It's buried beneath a barrier of toys, dust, and discarded, too-small clothes. Slumped face down on the ground, as dirty and unused as it was years ago when he'd gouged right through its chest, sprinkling decadent petals of ketchup across the marble floor of a long forgotten, long crumbling castle. It appears dead if not for the small spark of blue glimmering within its left eye-socket. It doesn't respond when he prods it with a careless foot. 

He pulls the battered, red-stained jacket off its bony body, slides its shorts off gently, unhurried, as if undressing a doll, and props it up against his bedroom wall. The dim light from his table lamp does little to throw off the menacing shadows that stretch over its face. He runs a hand down its skull, revels in the warm pulse of residue magic bubbling to the surface as beads of glowing blue sweat, and gives it a gentle pat on the shoulder. The skeleton returns his smile with a glare.

"How are you, Sans?" The brown-haired teen asks amicably. 

Sans doesn't answer him. Continues to sit there in semi-darkness, chest rising up and down as if he actually had lungs to supply him air, as if he were actually a living, breathing, _conscious_ being. 

How ridiculous.

Frisk bends down to stare straight into those empty holes of black. What once frightened him when he'd first met Sans years ago now only causes a shiver of excitement down his spine. His smile widens as a flash of something - something like _memory_ \- sears across the monster's expression. There's barely any threat left in the skeletal frame that jerks at his sudden touch—a deceptive caress to his jaw, a more than innocent prod into that wide, gaping abyss of azure. 

Pain immediately shoots through his system.

Sans's left eye is flaring brighter than it ever has before, encasing his fingers in a layer of icy blue, ephemeral magic stopping his advances short. 

(But when has that ever deterred him from getting what he wants?) 

He leans down closer, towering over the small skeleton, and pushes deeper inside. He meets resistance, a hot clench around his intrusive digits, a liquid burn along his joints, but Frisk is nothing if not determined, stubborn, and ... _merciless_. In one swift movement, he spreads his fingers wide, farther and farther and _farther_ until he breaks through the sluggish magic coating, until he meets the fragile interior of Sans's skull. Just a graze, a simple, noncommittal swipe of flesh against bloodless bone, and Sans is writhing under him in agony, screaming without uttering a sound, feeling pain and hatred and fear and _everything_ —everything that a monster is completely incapable of. 

"How are you, Sans?" The human repeats, and this time, the skeleton responds back with a bloodstained spat to his face.

Frisk smiles, ketchup streaking down his cheek like tribal paint. He slowly removes his fingers; observes with a maniac wonder the plasmic liquid staining his nails from tip to cuticle, the jagged slash that cuts clean through Sans's bright blue eye, severing the very magic that had kept him alive up until now. His aura is wavering, weak and unsteady like the pulse of a stuttering, dying heart. 

But monsters don't _have_ hearts, so it's absolutely ridiculous, the strange sensation he feels at the sight of this mutilated creature, drudged from the recesses of his childhood... this nightmare he can't escape from, no matter how hard he tries. 

"How are you, Sans?" Frisk asks again, and no one answers. 

He closes his eyes, and reality melts away into darkness and boxes and images of faces with names he hardly remembers anymore. He feels claws scratching at his back, blood overflowing to stain the snowy landscape of some far-away land. 

"Are you okay, Sans?" 

The minutes tick by, and despite how easily time flies past him, ending years of war-filled memories - of battles with monsters who'd stood in his way with patient, caring smiles, who'd frightened him with their deceptive warmth and a kindness that shouldn't exist in a world so tainted by _hatred_ \- this moment feels infinite. Replayed over and over again like a record, as if on reset. The decaying thing under his fingertips feels solid as nothing ever has in his life. 

It keeps him suspended to a tragedy of his own doing. 

"Sans, won't you answer me?"

Despite how hard he strains his ears, shrouded by blinding black light, he can't decipher anything in the stillness of the room... nothing but the harsh, panting gasps of a monster.

The wall glitters with the residue presence of something - _someone_ \- he can't quite recall; he reaches out to smear the mound of dust onto the floor. It scatters over his legs, shines like pellets of sand under the weak lamp light. Strangely enough, it feels foreign to the touch, not the rough, gritty texture of stripped bones and disused magic as he'd originally thought—but cold, clammy flesh, sullied hands covered in hematic sapphire, unruly hair fringed over wide, deranged eyes, and a smile so devoid of compassion that even its reflection refuses to acknowledge its humanity. 

_Despite everything, it's still you._

Frisk snaps his eyes open, and the monster stares back at him with its gaping, empty sockets. 

Despite everything, he still can't forget what he's done. 

~.

When he turns seventeen, Frisk decides to drag out the skeleton in his closet. 

It's buried beneath piles and piles of broken toys and moldy, wrinkled clothes, a layer of fine red coating its eyes and its cold, unsmiling grin. Scattered in the center is a dusty mess, the tattered pieces of a jacket and shorts, sneakers faded to black. It appears still, if not for the rustle of movement from the closet's corner, the sound of soft, echoing laughter, and the haunting remains of a childhood nightmare he knows he'll never be able to erase.

Eyes lowered, Frisk runs a soothing hand through that ashy, glittering blue mound. 

"Will you forgive me, Sans?" 

Silence. 

From the darkness, he makes out a glint of sapphire, gazing back at him through the slits of unfiltered light. The creature doesn't answer him, only grins as it reaches a bony hand through the abyss, dragging against his flesh—a clean incision from the tip of his right shoulder down through his chest. 

Diseased maroon splatters on the walls of the empty bedroom, decadent petal droplets streaking lazily to the ground.

His answer is clear.

**Author's Note:**

> Frisk does all of this when he turns 17 'cause I view 17 as the age where a child grows up and gradually becomes an adult. This is when most kids go off for college, mature (to some degree and extent), and consider their future deeply. So I think it's appropriate that Frisk would want to try and face his demons at this critical point in his life and, in the end, realize that he can't truly escape from the consequences of his past decisions.


End file.
